


wouldn't you know it

by iwanttoseethestars



Category: Spies Are Forever - Talkfine/Tin Can Brothers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Angst and Feels, Canon Related, Canon-Typical Violence, Dissociation, Explicit Language, F!Megan Curtis, F/F, Flashbacks, Implied Sexual Content, M!Tatianus Slozhno, Mental Health Issues, One Shot, Other, POV First Person, Past Relationship(s), Song Lyrics, Torture, Trans!NB!and/orGNC!Rowan Carvour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:55:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25221238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwanttoseethestars/pseuds/iwanttoseethestars
Summary: Amidst the throes of torture crudely masquerading as a tango, there is something Agent Megan Curtis can’t deny.
Relationships: Agent Curt Mega & Tatiana Slozhno, Owen Carvour & Agent Curt Mega, Owen Carvour/Agent Curt Mega
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	wouldn't you know it

**Author's Note:**

> quick first A.N.: in addition to the, well, _genderfucking_ going on here (why not keep the energy going this pride month 2: electric boogaloo?), a couple things do diverge from canon because, hey, narrative license!! (i can do what i like! **> =D**)  
> i thank my dear friend Rose for beta-ing this one!  
> enjoy~✨

As I’m tortured, several things run through my mind: how badly I regret going back to the American Secret Service. How, _Christ_ , it’s finally happening, I’m finally gonna die. And God, oh _God_ , I miss Rowan.

My torturer isn’t about to draw out a feather, her costume pitiful and her accent lazy at best. Nor will she drop it all easy as a hat — she _certainly_ won’t do that, not when her apparently-prized bounty is all tied up. Defenceless. _Alone_.

What the so-called Deadliest Man Alive _does_ do, however, is make absolutely sure to gloat, thoroughly as possible.

Upon meeting, I remember her working to clear up the confusion around her name with an icy and practised annoyance, even going so far as to murder her two compatriots in cold blood to speed up the already very illegal... _bomb situation_.

And that was what got her to finally grin (sadistically) with the also (nervously) smiling dealer. She was wearing the pants, so to speak. He — and me, and Tatianus — realised, then, that the Deadliest Man’s name suited her all too well.

And that’s just the thing: before the Deadliest Man’s overly familiar gloating, she made sure to gloat to me about this as well.

 _“It’s a_ man’s _world, Megan. Get it, love? You should know; you’re working for the government after all.”_

She spat out the last part — _“after all.”_ Not _“the government”_. If I had a clearer head, I just might extract something from that.

But I don’t, so I can’t. I _can’t_. Again, my hands are quite literally tied. She stands in front of me, wickedly imposing. Lets out a grin only I can see... and then she's pulling out my tooth and bringing out wires and I feel my wrists burn as I start to panic and I’ll certainly _never_ be a spy after this if I somehow survive in the first place and it _hurts so much_ and _why won’t she just kill me already—_

“Can’t you _see_ ,” she scoffs out and, shit, I can’t keep my damn mouth _shut_ , “how much I enjoy this?”

And upon meeting, I remember kissing Rowan at a ball. The soirée. Some neo-Rockefeller or other’s ass-kissing party. Dressed in a tuxedo, myself in silk, both to the nines. So I was already thrilled at the chance to wear some proper, classy stuff again. Let alone us both being there. Same mission, different agencies. We danced, the only ones in the room who saw and _knew_ each other's cover.

Afterward, in her hotel room, Rowan told me she was a woman.

The Deadliest Man Alive calls herself _a different breed._ She implies some kind of fateful machinations are at play, and I can see the Deadliest Man won’t let me die without knowing first just how much she is in her element. I'd say the fact hits me like a ton of bricks, but something deep down must've always known this would happen eventually —

_I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die—_

I suck in one breath, then another, and another, through my teeth. There’s a gap, and my breath threatens to run through, faster, faster, _faster_.

Her manic smile falls into a snarl as she whispers, then hisses, then shouts for me to _suffer._ Were this not the Deadliest Man herself, I’d say she’s _desperate_ for me to.

But. It’s her, all right.

_“What do you think we are, Meg?”_

_“What, apart from two spies slacking off on their respective missions?”_

I dream of Rowan.

_“Don’t play the fool with me, Megan. And you know, our parents were doing their — rather inferior — versions of what we just did around the time when one man declared humour as a defence mechanism—”_

_“_ Freud _, Rowan? Sigmund Freud!”_

 _“Well, madder things have been thought aloud, I suppose. Madder things have been_ done. _Is that why we’re here?”_

 _“What’s the_ madder thing _, Rowan?”_

_“You tell me, love.”_

_“I thought_ I _was playing the fool.”_

 _“No, no, I_ did _tell you not to.”_

 _“_ Rowan _!”_

_“A little louder for the mobsters next door, Megan?”_

_“Wait — shit? Next door? Is that Greco?”_

_“No, it’s the other guy. The_ consigliere. _Meg, just listen to me—”_

_“I’m sure he can make himself useful to us.”_

_“_ Us _? Are you willing to share, Megan?”_

_“Takes two, Rowan. Agencies won’t share this if you won’t let ‘em. Five minutes, then we’ve got him.”_

_“Meg, you know it won’t take you five.”_

_“It won’t take_ us _five. We can do three.”_

_“Are you kidding me? Neither of us has any kind of clearance to use explicit force, or—”_

_“We don’t need that. Rowan,_ I _— I just need you..._

_“Tell you what: you can come after me, if you really wanna minimise suspicion that bad.”_

_“Megan goddamn Curtis.”_

_“If I’m not back in five, you know where to find me.”_

_“_ Megan _—”_

_“See you on the other side, sweetheart.”_

_“Meg…_

_“Come back to bed.”_

“Surrender!”

Hand at the small of my back. The other, pressing me down. Her _lips_ —

But not this time.

Ghost of a kiss; kiss of a ghost (if you’ll forgive the cliché). Same difference. Before she was stolen from touch altogether, she was only a touch away.

Never again.

_Remember._

Rowan, Rowan, Rowan _._

" _Never_!"

But now she’s gone, my words seem to fall to deaf ears. They don’t matter, not anymore. And only she mattered to me.

She was my best friend. She was so, _so_ many other things to me, but you can only be so many things to someone without knowing them fully, inside and out.

Rowan _knew_ my body. She knew every scar, every sensitivity. She knew the soft curves my agency forced me to weaponise on foul and hapless men. They still do, actually — force me, that is. The thing is that they’re quieter about it now, though: allowing me to choose my own attire and spin most, if not all, of my story. All in all treating me a little more like a lady than their commissioned and disillusioned _femme fatale_. Poor goddamn Tatianus.

Rowan knows — Rowan _knew_ the role was phoney. As spies _are_ , obviously, but still. The phoniness took a healthy heap of pride for it to stick and, _yes_ , pride might just run deeper in this body than the blood in my veins. But Rowan... Rowan ran deeper.

If you know me, you’ll understand that most, when looking at the woman who calls herself Megan Curtis, see one of three things: my profession (with its heavy reputation), my cover (a woman willing to be _pursued_ ) or _that_ , well, through a less flattering lens. Rowan saw all three as the outermost parts of a Matryoshka doll. Layer by layer she cracked me open, and I came to realise that I felt freer than I ever had, like after every mission, every seduction, every escapade, I’d finally found the place I was yet to explore: _her_.

Still, outside every hotel room, the doll had to be remade. The pride had stuck. And _that_ was what killed my best friend.

Years later, I may have managed to patch myself up, but I’d be stupid not to tell that the cracks still show. Some part of me never would be saveable, lying inside that empty casket belonging to her. Barely more than the baby in the centre, a little too close to hollow.

I’m still here, though. Enough of me. I can’t die, not now. Not when I’ve got something to prove to myself. Something I can hopefully, _actually_ be proud of myself for. And it’s this goddamn _job_.

She is _not_ going to kill me yet.

And the Deadliest Man Alive seems to realise this with me.

If you know any spy, you’ll know that spies don’t die, _per se_. They are exterminated; captured; they go M.I.A; betray their country; _vanish_. But they never die.

Even if this ends, perhaps I won’t either.

So what if the thought strikes me with _wistfulness_ , and specifically the kind that lingers with a nasty half-life. _Fuck_ that.

Good side of having a little less _me_ than I did when — in _the past_? I can pull myself up a little easier by my bootstraps.

The Deadliest Man and I, our eyes stay on the other’s. I go to narrow mine.

But it seems like I had forgotten what she was, what she _is_ , doing to me.

Words could be stumbling from my mouth. Perhaps I may be going into shock. Or my ears might be ringing and I’m realising far too belatedly how many things have been done to me that I wouldn’t be able to pinpoint the reason _why_ any of my responses could be happening to save anyone’slife. Let alone mine.

But at some point, I see _her_ eyes widen and, distantly aware how hard I’m trembling, I resign myself to the fact this look, this expression that doesn’t seem to sit right on that face, could be the last thing I see after all. Yet another thing the famous Agent Megan Curtis can't figure out.

And at some point, the Deadliest Man is shot. I watch, like the sound had sucked every grain of noise from the room, in silence.

She falls away and leaves everything behind.

From behind me, Tatianus shouts. Immediately I shout back, but — well, shit. My ears aren’t ringing _so_ hard that I can’t hear myself whining. It’s quite the struggle for me to _can it_ as he loosens my restraints.

Blood is flowing back to my hands again. It's also fallen from my mouth to my dress. No matter which way I turn my head, the smell of metal follows. Dizzily I stagger to my feet, unsure if I’ve felt this helpless for years. _Agent Megan Curtis, cascaded quite ungracefully from the position of femme fatale to damsel in distress, found too in shock to speak and too much of a damn pussy to check for burnt hair._ I curse at myself, and of _course_ that externalises.

Tatianus’s eyeroll is long-suffering and practically audible. “ _What’s your damage, man?”_ he mutters, almost to himself... in Russian.

_Well._

Deciding to treat me like a damsel anyway, he takes my hand and gestures toward the exit, clenching his teeth as — I assume — he’s ordering me around to get the hell out of there with him.

Thumb pressing into the metacarpals. Tips wrapped around the index.

The scratch of a new suit jacket.

 _Rowan_. 

_If she’s wearing a dress, she’ll walk. When she runs she’s usually in a suit. Either way, always the one to manipulate any role to her own benefit — those of gender included, naturally — she will hold my hand._

_This time, I am wearing the suit. She knocks the shoes off her feet and I grab her hand._

_I tug too hard._

_My boots grip the platform with ease. Her feet have silk stockings._

_I reach for her too late._

_Her dress billows above her in the ever-hotter wind. I see the last turn of her English-rose face, writ large with panic. And then she is swallowed by fire._

_Turning away, I shoot each henchman clean in the head, running faster and harder from the flame._

Tatianus is pulling me out the door. My heels are off, thank God, so I can keep up just fine after I shrug off the pain.

 _Oh, God._ My _chest_. 

Not all of the pain, it seems.

It's _burning_.

_She's burning._

I will always remember that night — it began with Rowan undercover, a Russian lackey and an easy escape.

I thought it would be another easy mission. Everything was easier with her. Everything was so much more _fun._ If only I had known.

_What was it she had said to me?_

I remember.

 _“Personal history does have its benefits,_ Megan _.”_

**Author's Note:**

> woohoo, one ~~more~~ shot for _SAF_ !! (how off-brand of me, posting something on AO3 that isn't _Hannibal_... >;3c)  
> my thought process for this one was mainly: i love _SAF_. i also acknowledge it's got a tone problem. so, "death" (sneaky Owen) by tragic circumstance (i.e. his lover, _ouch_ )...? yes please!! but... a banana? that's got to go, babey!!  
> i hope i rectified that here. do let me know, this being my first _Spies_ piece, comments being my absolute fav thing, and all that? *puppy eyes ensue*
> 
> thank you so much for reading,  
> kit. <3


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